Students in the UK and Australia (and several other countries, I'm sure) traditionally travel during their gap year--this is the year between graduating from high school (in a manner of speaking) and starting university. Not everyone does it, but many do, and it's a sanctioned rite of passage for high school graduates the world over.

In the US though--not so much. We tend to go directly into university. We may travel in the summers or during Spring Break, but we don't dedicate a whole year just to travel. What we do instead is the Semester (or year) Abroad.

For me, it was always going to be the UK. I was an English major--the daughter of a Shakespeare professor. Having been raised Episcopalian (the US version of the Anglican church) by a serious Anglophile, destiny only had one path for my semester abroad: Oxford.

I went for the duration of the summer in 1997 to study Shakespearian comedies and Virginia Woolf. My Woolf teacher was the typically charismatic-but-slightly-seedy intellectual one expects to find as a pre-eminent scholar in his field. My Shakespeare professor was a fussy, frizzy woman with shapeless skirts and an alarmingly intolerant attitude to the non-English parts of the UK.

At Oxford we took tutorials, which meant there were only four or five people in a class, and you would meet in your professor's spacious office. Our Woolf teacher's office, as you may expect, was done in sumptious dark leathers, and we all smoked cigarettes and occassionally had glasses of wine as we discussed the genius of Woolf. For each class I had to read a book (or play, in the case of Shakespeare) a week and write a paper on it. On the days that papers were due, my normally inebriated crew of fellow students would only have one beer, and then take over the computer lab and hammer out lengthy literature analyses until they were at least ten pages, double-spaced (natch).

Because we only met for each class once a week and for one hour, we had oodles of free time. Everyone in the program was also from the University of Georgia, like myself. We had the entire building of Jesus College to ourselves--a lovely and stately building with a huge courtyard in which would would spend many hours reading while periodically hot air balloons would fly by. Our "dorms" were much more luxurious than the squashed quarters we were used to in Georgia--rooms to ourselves, which had separated study and sleeping areas and a sink for washing up.

We were also delighted at having our very own pub. I grew up in Massachusetts and went to college in Georgia--there is no chance of having a university pub in either of these places. Our little pub didn't stay open too late, but it was the perfect starting point after dinner (the hall of which, by the way, was used to film the Great Hall scenes in the Harry Potter movies!). We'd have a few pints in our wee pub, then make our way out to explore the pubs of Oxford, which ranged from historic to twee to dingy. After all the pubs and late-night bars were closed, we would get some chips to go from the many roving kebab vans that parked serendipitously outside the establishment with the latest closing time every night.

At least once or twice a week we'd get the greasiest, most delicious fish & chips from this hole-in-the-wall chippie and head over to the Christ Church park by the Thames. We'd study, someone (always male) would inevitably bring a guitar and the ladies would bat their eyelashes and pretend to ignore them as they played Neutral Milk Hotel and Radiohead and warbled throatily. Somewhere in the middle of all this we'd plan our next weekend trip.

Rather fortuitously, my mom got me a Britrail pass before I went over to England. This was a good thing, as you can't purchase them there, and it made my trip to the UK exponentially better. Every weekend we'd hop on a train (no reservations needed) and go anywhere. We went to Dover, Conwy in Wales, Edinburgh in Scotland, Windsor, the Lake District, and London. If it was a day trip, we would inevitably would get on the hop-on, hop-off buses, which were a great way of getting to all the sights and getting some historical information as well. Then it would be a pub lunch of fish and chips with Boddingtons and then back home.

We did a lot of tromping around looking for accomodation in London and Edinburgh, because we were dense and thought we could land in the most popular tourist destinations in the world in the height of summer and find a cheap place to stay on every block. In Edinburgh this was even stupider because it was the Edinburgh Festival! We finally found a B&B which was three miles away and didn't provide towels. Now it's a funny story--then it was just silly.

Regardless, studying abroad was the most fantastic experience--it was cool to see how other universities work in the pub-replete country of England. I loved being able to explore every weekend. If you are studying abroad, you should definitely come in to STA to get some ideas for how you can take advantage of your travel opportunities! In addition to the Britrail, I also had the ISIC, which got me discounts everywhere--which is always good when you are a poor student. :)